Logan Moore, a Durango High School sophomore, allowed an idea bouncing around his head for four years to sprout.
Now, it’s providing benefits for many Miller Middle School students who hoof it to school, and Moore is on the path to earning an Eagle Scout award for his effort.
He built – with the labor provided by friends and family, his father, Paul, and parents of his friends – a winding stairway to replace an old trail worn wide by years of students climbing it to scale the hillside at 26th Street and West Third Avenue to reach the school’s playing field.
“I had fallen down the old trail several times,” Logan, 15, said. “It’s super steep, and when it rains or snows, it’s really slippery.”
The going was tough at first, he said. The first two steps took an hour to complete, but by the end, Logan and crew could complete a step in 20 minutes.
All told, Logan, who is in Boy Scout Troop 501, and his crew worked over six days in late September and put in 218 work hours to complete the stairs.
Mike Jaramillo, a special education teacher at Miller who has lunch duty and supervises the playing field, said the steps have definitely helped with access and safety.
“It’s awesome. I’ve used it a couple of times myself. It’s extremely well-built,” he said.
Now, Jaramillo said among his lunch duties is to remind students not to use the steps as any easy access to escape the school grounds during the break.
“It was an old game trail that the kids used for years. They wore the trail in, but it wasn’t safe. With any snow or rain on it, it was a toboggan course” he said.
Any do-it-yourselfer knows complications have a way of imposing their unforeseen sway over initial plans, and Logan’s project was no exception.
Because the stairway led to a school, it had to meet a tougher set of standards that required the introduction of a handrail to aid people on their ascent.
“I knew it was going to be a big project,” he said. “I wasn’t sure we were going to have to put in the rail. When we had to put in the rail, I realized it was going to be a super-big project.”
Logan’s sister, Halle, an eighth-grader at Miller, has told him she gets plenty of compliments from Miller students about the stairs.
Logan estimates about 40 to 50 students use the stairs daily. In addition, neighborhood walkers are using the winding steps.
But heavy use of the stairs doesn’t worry Logan, who estimates the stairway has a 30-year lifespan. He has also left a pile of gravel at the top of the stairs to fill in the steps as they wear with use.
Rebar has been used to lock the stairway together, pressure-treated logs were used for the legs and steps, the entire staircase has been excavated and filled with gravel, and mortar uprights hold the handrail uprights in place.
After building the stairs, Durango School District 9-R is responsible for its upkeep. And the district also kicked in $400 to help cover material costs.
Miller Middle School Principal Vicki Trousdale is happy.
“Logan’s stairway project immediately improved the aesthetics and safety at Miller. We are so appreciative of his hard work,” she said.
parmijo@duangoherald.com
Sponsors of Logan Moore’s Eagle Scout project
Sponsors provided thousands of dollars in donations of material and in-kind services to help Logan Moore bring his Eagle Scout project to fruition. The sponsors included:
AJ Construction
Alpine Lumber
Builders First Choice
City Market
Durango School District 9-R
Janet Wiley Architect
Kurt Kutzleb with Kurt’s Repair and Custom Welding
Miller MPAC
Recla Metals
Trails 2000
Trautner Geotech
Volunteers who helped
